Snapshot 1887 – The End of the Western Frontier?

August 23, 2024 by  
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Although I’ve said this before, I love this collectible! If someone were to ask me what brought about the end of the Western Frontier, until today I would have likely provided guesses such as: the ongoing threat to life through danger and disease, the hardships of life in an era we now romanticize, the increasing presence of more and more little houses on the prairie, and similar. However…

As I was searching for an issue to satisfy a collector’s request, the front cover of an unrelated issue grabbed my attention (shown to the right). Over the course of the next 30 minutes I learned about the great mid-west Blizzard which occurred during the winter of 1886-1887, the corresponding floods which brought calamity to as far north as the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana, through the Great Plains of Nebraska, and all the way down to Texas – in what is now referred to as “The Great Die Up”. Many believe it is this event which triggered the end to the America’s Western Frontier. Scores of lives lost, entire small towns washed away, innumerable ranches vanquished, and a loss of cattle beyond imagination. Although the reasons are actually a bit more complex, the accidental “find” of a Frank Leslie’s Illustrated for April 2, 1887, and the related rabbit trails it inspired, make offering and collecting “old newspapers” quite satisfying.

The following is a photo of an inside page which included several related illustrations. Note: the link to the issue includes access to a couple of the online resources I accessed during my exploration).

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